Category: Diocese of Scranton News

JERUSALEM (OSV News) – In what was a devastating Sunday morning for hostage families, Israel said Sept. 1 that it had recovered the bodies of six hostages in Gaza, including the body of Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose parents became outspoken global advocates for all hostages to be released.

The military confirmed all six had been killed shortly before the arrival of Israeli forces, The Associated Press reported. The army identified the other dead hostages as Ori Danino, 25; Eden Yerushalmi, 24; Almog Sarusi, 27; and Alexander Lobanov, 33; who, like Hersh, were taken on Oct. 7, 2023, from the music festival. The sixth, Carmel Gat, 40, was abducted from the nearby farming community of Be’eri. All six bodies were discovered in a Gaza tunnel with gunshot wounds.

Pope Francis, in his Sept. 1 Angelus prayer, said, “I once again turn my thoughts with concern to the conflict in Palestine and Israel, which risks spreading to other Palestinian cities. I appeal for the negotiations to continue and for an immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages, and relief to the people of Gaza, where many diseases are also spreading, such as poliomyelitis.”

The pontiff urged: “May there be peace in the Holy Land, may there be peace in Jerusalem!”

U.S. President Joe Biden, who has met with Goldberg-Polin’s parents, said Sept. 1 he was “devastated and outraged” by the news of Hersh’s death.

“It is as tragic as it is reprehensible,” he said. “Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. And we will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sept. 1 on X, formerly Twitter, “Hersh Goldberg-Polin is an American hero who will be remembered for his kindness and selflessness.”

He addressed the parents of Hersh, Rachel Goldberg-Polin and her husband, Jon, who have traveled around the world and talked to world leaders since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and abducted their son and 250 other people, urging action on the release of all hostages, not only their son’s, at world forums, including the United Nations.

“Our hearts break for Jon, Rachel, and their entire family, as well as the other families who found out today their loved ones won’t be coming home. May their memory be a blessing,” Blinken said.

Hours after the hostages were proclaimed dead, massive protests erupted in Israel, urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an immediate cease-fire that would bring the remaining hostages home.

Netanyahu said however Sept. 1 that the six hostages found in Gaza Strip’s Rafah were killed in “cold blood” and blamed Hamas for the lack of a cease-fire deal — “whoever murders hostages doesn’t want a deal,” he said.

After a march of thousands of people in the streets of Israel Sept. 1 and a rare general strike on Sept. 2, Netanyahu did not seem pressured, saying, “No one is more committed to freeing the hostages than me. … No one will preach to me on this issue.”

On the afternoon of Sept. 2, thousands of mourners lined the streets of Jerusalem to bid farewell to Hersh.

Since her 23-year-old son had his left arm blown off at the elbow and was taken hostage into Gaza by Hamas, his mother, Rachel, has become the international voice for hostage families.

“Now I no longer have to worry about you. I know you are no longer in danger,” she said at her son’s funeral.

“I want to do hakarat hatov (recognize the good) and thank God right now in front of all of you for giving me this magnificent present of my Hersh,” she added, sobs audible around her, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported. “For 23 years, I was privileged to have the most stunning honor to be Hersh’s mama. I’ll take it and say thank you. I just wish it had been for longer.”

“My sweet boy, finally, finally, finally, finally, you’re free,” she said. “I will love you and I will miss you every single day for the rest of my life.”

Hers and her family’s shirts were ripped, in keeping with the Jewish tradition of rending one’s clothing upon learning of the death of a loved one.

Addressing the crowd at the funeral, President Isaac Herzog apologized to the murdered hostages and their families for the state’s failure to bring them home alive.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin felt extremely “grateful and privileged” to have met with Pope Francis, along with 11 other hostage families in November 2023, just over a month after her son was taken into Gaza. She showed the pope the video of Hersh, who after his arm was blown off was able to put a tourniquet on it to stop the bleeding as he climbed onto the back of a pick-up truck. The pope was visibly shaken after having seen the video in a Nov. 22 meeting, she told OSV News in February.

“He said something really simple to me, (after seeing the video), to all of us, that what (we’ve) experienced is terrorism, and terrorism is the absence of humanity. Which was really short but so wise because I had, without realizing it really, begun to question humanity,” Goldberg-Polin said.

“And he gave me permission to not lose faith in humanity. I can still have faith and hope that humanity will be victorious over the darkness that we, the hostage families and the hostages themselves, are going through,” she told OSV News as she was still hopeful their son will be back home soon.

On Aug. 29, relatives of hostages taken to Gaza had just gathered to shout out their hope and their pain in Nirim, at the fence around the security zone 1.2 miles from the Gaza Strip. Rachel delivered a heart-wrenching message at the Gaza border.

“Hersh! It’s Mom. … I pray to God he brings you back. Right now. I love you, stay strong, survive,” she shouted in a microphone in hopes her 23-year-old Israeli-American son might hear her.

Earlier in August, Hersh’s parents were speakers at the Democratic National Convention.

“This is a political convention. But needing our only son — and all of the cherished hostages — home is not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue,” said his father, Jon Polin, Aug. 21 in Chicago. Bowing her head during the ovation, Rachel called on her son to “stay strong, survive.”

On Sept. 1, the Golberg-Polin family released a statement: “With broken hearts, the Goldberg-Polin family is devastated to announce the death of their beloved son and brother, Hersh. The family thanks you all for your love and support and asks for privacy at this time.”

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. It has displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

Fighting in Gaza paused for a brief time while polio vaccinations were carried out after U.N. officials confirmed a 10-month-old baby had been partially paralyzed after contracting Gaza’s first case of polio for 25 years. Israel has agreed to a series of “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to allow for the vaccination of children against polio.

(OSV News) – The organization that coordinates efforts related to the National Eucharistic Revival announced Sept. 3 the launch of the Society of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus to boost revival efforts.

In an email to supporters, Jason Shanks, CEO of National Eucharistic Congress Inc., described the society as a way people “can help and remain closely connected to the many ongoing efforts of charity and evangelization, of pilgrimage and procession – of mission – to bring Christ to every corner of our nation.”

Joining the society requires a minimum $10 monthly donation to National Eucharistic Congress Inc. Members will receive a copy of “For the Life of the World: Invited to Eucharistic Mission” by Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, who serves as board chairman of the National Eucharistic Congress Inc., and Tim Glemkowski, the founding CEO of National Eucharistic Congress Inc., who served in that role until Aug. 1.

Society members also receive access to the National Eucharistic Congress digital platform, which includes all of the talks from the July 17-21 National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, as well as additional Eucharist-related content.

Information on joining the society can be found at www.eucharisticcongress.org/donate.

Shanks, who took the helm of National Eucharistic Congress Inc. Aug. 1 after serving as president of the OSV Institute for Catholic Innovation in Indiana, described the revival’s next phase as “off to an amazing, grace-led start,” and he encouraged society members to “use the talks from the Congress and the wisdom of Bishop Cozzens’ and Tim’s book to form your heart for mission.”

National Eucharistic Congress Inc. oversaw the planning and execution of this year’s National Eucharistic Pilgrimage and National Eucharistic Congress, two major components of the National Eucharistic Revival. A three-year initiative of the U.S. bishops, the revival launched in 2022 with the aim of deepening Catholics’ understanding of and love for Jesus in the Eucharist.

The revival is now focusing on its Year of Mission, in which Catholics are encouraged to become “Eucharistic missionaries” who share the reality and impact of Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist with others. This is especially realized through the revival’s “Walk with One” campaign, which asks Catholics to identify one person whom they can accompany on their faith journey and deepen their relationship with Jesus Christ.

The National Eucharistic Congress Inc. nonprofit was formed in 2022 to support the bishops’ vision for the revival.

Although the bishops’ revival initiative originally was set to formally end with the feast of Pentecost 2025, Shanks told OSV News in August that the organization’s work will continue beyond June and is expected to include future national Eucharistic congresses.

In the Sept. 3 email to supporters, Shanks described the revival’s goal as “re-centering the life of the Catholic Church in America on Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament.”

“This is where every great Catholic saint and every great Catholic mission began, so it’s where we begin as well,” he wrote. “As we heard time and again at the Congress, He sustains us in the Most Blessed Sacrament as we set out on mission to love and serve Him by loving and serving those made in his image.”

(OSV News) – A “true Eucharistic experience” can recommit the faithful to the care of God’s creation, said two U.S. Catholic bishops in a joint message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.

On Aug. 30, Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Philadelphia, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, and Bishop A. Elias Zaidan of the Maronite Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on International Justice and Peace, released a reflection on the centrality of the Eucharist in redeeming humankind and the creation with which it has been divinely entrusted.

The annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, which takes place Sept. 1, was first proclaimed by the late Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I in 1989, coinciding with the start of the Orthodox liturgical year.

In 2015, Pope Francis instituted the observance in the Catholic Church, saying that it provided a “fitting opportunity” for Catholics “to reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation, to thank God for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care, and to implore his help for the protection of creation as well as his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live.”

In June, the pope announced the theme for this year’s day of prayer would be “Hope and Act with Creation.”

The World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation also marks the start of the “Season of Creation,” which concludes with the Oct. 4 feast of St. Francis of Assisi, whose “Canticle of the Sun” inspired the title and text of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.”

The five-week celebration of a “Season of Creation” had first been proposed in 2007 at the Third European Ecumenical Assembly, with the World Council of Churches moving the following year to endorse the time of prayer and action for environmental stewardship. Following Pope Francis’ designation of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Catholics throughout the world have increasingly participated in the extended “Season of Creation” observance.

In the U.S.,”the message of hope and care for creation resonates deeply with the Catholic community,” which “continues to experience the joy” of the 10th National Eucharistic Congress held in Indianapolis in July, said Archbishop Gudziak and Bishop Zaidan in their message.

Drawing on the insights of both Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI, the two bishops shared their thoughts on “hope in the Lord in a scientific age” where “an almost spiritual hope in techno-scientific progress” can cause a drift from a reliance on “amazing grace to amazing gadgets.”

The bishops noted that in his 2007 encyclical “Spe Salvi” (“In hope we were saved”), Pope Benedict XVI identified a profound shift in thought during the early 17th century that replaced hope in Christ with “faith in progress.” Pope Francis underscored the dangers of this shift in “Laudato Si’,” which, as the bishops noted, highlights a “technocratic paradigm whereby the unchecked power of technology drives the progressive devastation of the planet.

“The damaged fruit of our technocratic endeavors, a spoiled planet, is a problem that algorithms, machines and technologies can never solve,” said Archbishop Gudziak and Bishop Zaidan. “If we are to be saved in hope, that hope must be in God.”

The bishops stressed that “we are not left to our own devices” in healing the ravages of environmental exploitation or the ravages of sin on the human condition as a whole, since “God is with us.”

Rebuilding a broken world “can only happen in continuity with the first edifice, which has Jesus Christ as the cornerstone, the rock that holds everything together,” said the bishops.

The Eucharist assures us that “Jesus chose to remain with us in a specific and concrete way, in his Body and Blood.”

For that reason, “it should be of no surprise that the poor man of Assisi (St. Francis) had a profound reverence and respect for the Body and Blood of the Lord,” said Archbishop Gudziak and Bishop Zaidan.

“The ‘root and source’ of St. Francis’ love for peace, poverty and care for creation was Jesus Christ,” they said, referencing the Second Vatican Council’s description of the Eucharist as the source and summit of Christian life.

“The care for creation is constitutive of the Christian life,” they said. “So let us go forth, with hope, to care for all of God’s creation.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Earth is ailing, and it needs the prayers of Catholics as well as their personal commitment to caring for creation, Pope Francis said.

“Let us pray that each of us listen with our hearts to the cry of the Earth and of the victims of environmental disasters and climate change, making a personal commitment to care for the world we inhabit,” the pope said in a video message released Aug. 30 by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network.

The network posts a short video of the pope offering his specific prayer intention each month, and members of the network pray for that intention each day. Pope Francis’ intention for September is: “For the cry of the Earth,” which coincides with the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation Sept. 1 and its inauguration of the monthlong “Season of Creation.”

“If we took the planet’s temperature, it would tell us that the Earth has a fever,” the pope said in the video. “And it is sick, just like anyone who’s sick. But are we listening to this pain? Do we hear the pain of the millions of victims of environmental catastrophes?”

The first victims and those who suffer most, he said, are “the poor, those who are forced to leave their homes because of floods, heat waves or drought.”

To fight poverty and protect nature at the same time, people must change their personal habits, the pope said; but because climate change, pollution and the loss of biodiversity are “caused by humans,” social, economic and political responses also are necessary.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – A few hours after he railed against unjust immigration policies at his general audience, Pope Francis and community organizers associated with the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation returned to the theme of welcoming and integrating migrants.

“For us, baptism does not stop at the border,” Joe Rubio, national co-director of IAF for the west-southwest region, told Catholic News Service Aug. 29.

In 20 U.S. dioceses, the foundation and its partners run “Recognizing the Stranger,” a leadership development program that helps immigrants and members of their new parishes develop stronger relationships and work together for the good of their community.

Pope Francis had dedicated his entire general audience talk Aug. 28 to the theme of migration and the obligation to help those seeking safety, freedom and a better life for themselves and their families. He met the community organizers later that day.

While Rubio and his colleagues were in Rome, they also met with Emilce Cuda, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, to continue discussions on how their organizations could work with similar groups supported by the Latin American bishops’ council, known as CELAM.

“We see that the immigration phenomenon in the Americas is something that is the joint responsibility of the church in North and South America,” Rubio said, so finding ways to work together is something they are exploring. And, Rubio added, there seem to be “similarities between our style of organizing and how the church works, particularly in the poor communities in Latin America.”

The audience with the pope Aug. 28 was the leaders’ third private meeting with Pope Francis, and they left with a gift that doubled as homework: Near the end of their discussion, the pope asked an aide to get each of the organizers a copy in English or Spanish of his three encyclicals and three of his apostolic letters.

They had told the pope they were studying “Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship,” and that they and the people they train read “Power and Responsibility” by Father Romano Guardini, one of the pope’s preferred theologians.

While Pope Francis praised the community organizers for being concrete, for looking around them, listening to people’s needs and then collaborating to find solutions, Rubio said he also told them, “How good it is that you are reading Guardini.”

Joining Rubio in recounting their meeting with the pope to CNS were: Tim McManus, a senior organizer working in Texas, California and Arizona; Elizabeth Valdez, a Houston-based organizer; Liz Hall, lead organizer in the San Francisco Bay Area; and Jorge Montiel, an organizer in Colorado and New Mexico.

Each person at the meeting, they said, had a chance to share his or her personal story with the pope. Montiel said one of the organizers told the pope how she did not want to get involved in community organizing because her experience was that politics always ends up being about power, and power corrupts. But, in the end, the killing of a 6-year-old girl in her neighborhood convinced her to act.

In response, Montiel said, Pope Francis told them, “Faith that does not lead to the work of justice is not real faith.”

In “Fratelli Tutti,” Montiel said, the pope talks a lot about the importance of politics in serving the common good, “but he is way more cautious when talking about power.”

But, Pope Francis told the group, “power is ‘fugitive.’ You either take it or it disappears. Now, it’s more comfortable if you let it go. If you take it, it’s more work because you have to be responsible,” Montiel said the pope told them.

(OSV News) – A study published in July revealed that a new analysis of the Shroud of Turin, including the composition and a microscopic analysis of bloodstains, shows that the marks are consistent with the tortures endured by Christ as described in the Gospels.

The study, titled “New Insights on Blood Evidence from the Turin Shroud Consistent with Jesus Christ’s Tortures,” stated that the presence of creatinine particles with ferritin, which are often a by-product of muscle contractions, “confirms, at a microscopic level, the very heavy torture suffered by Jesus of the HST,” or Holy Shroud of Turin.

Furthermore, “numerous bloodstains scattered throughout the double body image of the HST show evidence that Jesus of the HST was tortured,” it stated.

“Bloodstained marks all over the body image which are consistent with pre-crucifixion flagellation, bloodstained marks on the head that are consistent with a ‘crown’ of thorns, blood marks on the hand and feet that are consistent with crucifixion and the bloodstain on the chest that evidences a post-mortem wound that corresponds with the post-mortem spear wound that Christ received as is described in the Bible,” the report said.

The new study was written by Giulio Fanti, associate professor of Mechanical and Thermal Measurements at the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Padua. According to his personal website, Fanti has studied and written about the famed burial cloth since 2004.

The funding for the study, the report said, “was partially supported by a religious group that requested anonymity” and that the group entrusted Fanti with “the analysis of the so-called ‘Padre Pio handkerchief,’ a fabric on which two images considered miraculous are imprinted on the front and back of (a Shroud of Turin-like) Jesus Christ and Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, respectively.”

According to the report, a preliminary study conducted by Fanti, along with Christian Privitera, an engineer, revealed the presence “of an almost transparent substance” between the bloodstained threads of the shroud.

“This substance, given its origin and in agreement with other scholars who have analyzed the Shroud of Oviedo, could be the semi-transparent fluid produced by pulmonary edema,” the report said, referring to the excessive accumulation of fluid in the lungs that Jesus was believed to have suffered from while on the cross.

The Shroud of Oviedo, Spain, is what both tradition and scientific studies claim was the cloth used to cover and clean the face of Jesus after the crucifixion.

Fanti’s study on the Shroud of Turin stated that aside from confirming the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ torture, including the flagellation, the right eye of the man of the shroud, given that it was “more sunken” with a vertical mark over the “apparently furrowed” eyelid,” indicate that he “could have been blinded by another blow of the scourge on the head.”

“As an alternative to the scourge mark on the right eye, one can think of a wound produced by a thorn from the crown placed on Jesus’ head,” the report stated.

The 14-foot-by-4-foot shroud features a full-length photonegative image of a man, front and back, bearing signs of wounds that correspond to the Gospel accounts of the torture Jesus endured in his passion and death.

The Catholic Church has never officially ruled on the shroud’s authenticity, saying judgments about its age and origin belonged to scientific investigation. Scientists have debated its authenticity for decades, and studies have led to conflicting results.

A 1988 carbon testing dated the cloth to the 12th century, leading many to conclude that the shroud is a medieval forgery. However, scientists have challenged that claim by noting that the methodology of the testing was erroneous and that the sample used in the carbon dating process was a piece used to mend the cloth in the Middle Ages.

A 2014 study published in the 2018 Journal of Forensic Sciences by Matteo Borrini, an Italian forensic scientist, and Luigi Garlaschelli, an Italian chemist, stated that blood patterns on the shroud were not consistent with those left by a crucified person.

Garlaschelli also posted a YouTube video of his experiment in 2015 using a live person to study the blood patterns in various positions as well as pressing a sponge against a plastic mannequin to examine the way the fake blood flowed.

However, several experts and researchers criticized the 2014 study, stating that their findings lacked the accuracy of past studies, some of which involved cadavers of men who died of hemopericardium, the pooling of blood in the heart, which is believed to be what ultimately caused Jesus’ death on the cross.

In his report, Fanti questioned the results of the 1988 study, stating that certain factors, including the presence of neutron radiation, transformed elements in the shroud, “thus heavily skewing the results of the radiocarbon dating of the HST performed in 1988 by many centuries.”

LAFLIN — The Congregation of the Oblates of Saint Joseph, located at 1880 Route 315, Laflin, will host their annual Triduum and Labor Day Mass celebrations honoring Saint Joseph the Worker.

A three-day preparation of Masses over the Labor Day Weekend will be offered on Friday, Saturday & Sunday, Aug. 30-Sept. 1, with liturgies celebrated daily at noon in the Oblates seminary chapel.

Devotions to Saint Joseph, with special intentions for all workers and the unemployed, will follow each Mass. A blessing with the first-class relic of Saint Joseph Marello, founder of the Oblate religious order, will conclude the devotions.

A special morning Mass will be celebrated on Labor Day, Sept. 2, at 11 a.m., honoring the Patron Saint of Workers. Following the Mass, bread will be blessed and distributed to all the faithful as a symbol of the “fruit of our labor.”

Serving as celebrant and homilist for this year’s Labor Day Mass will be Oblate Father Paul A. McDonnell, rector of the OSJ religious community and pastor of Divine Mercy Parish in Scranton.

The Triduum and Labor Day liturgical celebrations will be broadcast live on JMJ Catholic Radio 104.5 FM. For more information, contact the Oblates main office at (570) 654-7542 or email: osjseminary@comcast.net.

SCRANTON – September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, and to offer healing and to increase awareness about the Church’s mercy and care for those who have died by suicide, the Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, will celebrate a Mass for Suicide Healing and Remembrance Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at 12:15 p.m. at the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Scranton.

The Mass will serve to remember loved ones lost to suicide, and to promote healing for those who grieve their passing.

During the Mass, those attending will be invited to bring forward a flower in remembrance of those lost to suicide. If you, your family, or someone you know has been affected by suicide, please share this information and encourage them to participate.

All are welcome to attend the Mass.

The Mass will also be broadcast live on CTV: Catholic Television of the Diocese of Scranton and livestream on the Diocese of Scranton website (dioceseofscranton.org), YouTube channel, and links to the Mass provided on all Diocesan social media platforms.

For more information on the upcoming Mass for Suicide Healing and Remembrance, please contact the Diocesan Office for Parish Life at (570) 207-2213.